THE RU8AL MEW- WORKER 
thur Young remarked that the Suffolk 
breed had been preserved by a kind of 
accident, but this is doubtful, for the Suf¬ 
folk breeders, without being guided by any 
fixed principlesin the choice of animals or in 
perpetuating their qualities, undoubtedly fol¬ 
lowed a certain rude experience which led 
them to keep and,to a certain extent, improve 
a race of animals adapted to their partic¬ 
ular purpose. The attempts made to improve 
this breed for the purpose of rendering it 
suitable to the grazier as well as the dairy 
have not been a success, though when in proper 
condition for the shambles they are said to 
be extraordinarily good cutters and their beef 
is excelled by that of few. 
It is said that the best of the cows will 
give 21 quarts of milk a day, but, as in the 
case of the J erseys, such large milkers are not 
the best butter producers, and I can find no 
records of any butter makers among them 
like the J erseys. A half a century ago and 
over, Malcom, in his “ Compendium of Mod 
ern Husbandry', 1 ’ mentioned that he “ kept an 
Alderney (the common name then for all the 
Channel Island cattle including Jerseys,) and 
a Suffolk cow—the latter the best of the kind 
he ever saw, and during seven years, the 
milk and butter beiug always kept separate, 
it was found year by year that tbe value of 
the Alderney exceeded that of the Suffolk, 
though the latter gave more than double the 
quantity of milk at each ‘■meal,” anylice, milk¬ 
ing. The polled cows of Norfolk are similar 
in most respects to those of Suffolk. It has 
been _ asserted that the Suffolks originated 
from the Galloway Scotch polled cattle, but 
this is quite unlikely, as the similarities are 
few and tbe diversities much more numerous. 
The predominant color of the Galloways is 
black or tawny, and they have always been 
noted for their good beef qualities, a writer in 
the sixteenth century speaking of them as 
“ fair ky and oxiu of quhilk the flesh is right 
delicious and tender” and the Galloway rib 
is well known at the present time in Smith- 
field. The cows are indifferent milkers and 
soon run dry like the other mountain breeds 
of Scotland, but their milk is of rich quality 
and productive of butter. 
The Angus polled breed termed by the 
country people “dodded” and sometimes 
“ humbled” cattle, is a race between those of 
the mountains and the plains, and from all 
vei'itable accounts it, as well as the Gallo¬ 
way and probably all other present hornless 
breeds, was originally horned, and the change 
may have been due either to the physical 
circumstances of the country where the breeds 
originated or to the effects of selection in breed¬ 
ing or to a combination of these causes. Some¬ 
times even yet the horns are developed in in¬ 
dividuals, and as this is regarded as a test of 
impurity they are cut off. Attention was es¬ 
pecially devoted to the Angus as a separate 
variety soon after our Revolutionary War 
with Great Britain was closed, when the ag¬ 
riculture of that part of Scotland began a 
course of rapid improvement. During the 
war with France in the beginning of this 
century their cultivation and improvement 
continually extended, and they were driven to 
the English market under the name of Gallo¬ 
ways which they resembled in aspect and gen¬ 
eral character, and ever since there have been 
continued exportations to Yorkshire, Norfolk, 
Leicester and other grazing counties of Eng¬ 
land where they are fattened, and thence 
they find their way to Smitbfield and feed the 
beef eaters of London. Though having a cer¬ 
tain resemblance to tbe Galloways, yet living 
in a less humid climate, being subjected to 
more artificial treatment and being less ex¬ 
posed accordingly to the inclemency of the 
weather and better treated when calves, 
they have a finer though perhaps not softer 
skiu and a less rough coat of hair than the 
Galloway, and are better milkers. The An¬ 
gus breed has been crossed with the Short¬ 
horn, but tbe benefit ends in a great degree 
with the first cross and the subsequent pro¬ 
geny is inferior to the pure Short-horns in 
size and tendency to fatten. 
There are also the Polled Aberdeen¬ 
shire breed and the polled Irish breed 
less known and less valuable than the 
others, and on the peninsula of Fife 
stretching into the Gorman. Ocean be¬ 
tween the noble estuaries of the Forth and 
Tay are cattle larger than those of the higher 
counties, showing a mixture of breeds, some 
with and some without horns, hardy and ex¬ 
cellent milkers. In Paraguay cattle have 
been found some without horns and some with 
reversed hair, which are said to have originated 
there. Polled cattle have been, until recently, 
rare in this country, but it was almost invari¬ 
ably true that the “ muley” cow as she has al¬ 
ways been called here, has proved a good- 
milker and 1 do not remember any of vicious 
quality. But no polled cow, nor any num¬ 
ber of them, have equaled the Jersey individ¬ 
ually nor in the aggregate in the richness and 
butter-producing quality of the milk, and 
probably never will, as the latter breed has 
got the start in that direction and individual 
cows have already made six, seven and eight 
hundred pounds of butter a year, a feat not 
likely to be reached by any individual of any 
other race. 
“ Stockman ” says it is only playing with 
agriculture for rich men to pay such high prices 
for Jerseys. Well, hasn’t that kind of play 
always gone on to the ultimate benefit of 
farmers of every degree ? Didn’t the dukes 
and lords of England and the Jonases and 
Bakewells play after the same manner with the 
Short-horns and sheep until the best of beef 
could be turned into the slaughter house at 
two instead of four years old, and the wool in¬ 
creased in quality and quantity so as to double 
and treble the value of the animal that bore it? 
Hasn’t the expensive luxury of horse-racing 
put stamina and endurance into the quadru¬ 
peds, and hunting furnished soldiers of a qual¬ 
ity which elicited the remark from Welling¬ 
ton that Waterloo was won in the hunting 
grounds of England? All the valuable im¬ 
provements in agriculture are owing, not to the 
workers of the soil, but to outsiders who have 
invented the machinery, and to the capitalists 
who have furnished the means to put the in¬ 
ventions on the market. The capitalists who 
build raib’oads and steamships are as much 
benefactors of the human race as the captains, 
sailors, engineers and firemen who run them. 
If there had been no advance in steam travel 
since the time of Fulton the Atlantic would 
not be as now, a ferry between us and Eu¬ 
rope; nor could the vessels of that period have 
weathered the storms of the last two months; 
and were not the continent gridironed by rail¬ 
roads, the country could never have devel¬ 
oped as rapidly as it has, and the different 
portions of it would have been yet sundered 
by vast distances which are now bridged and 
immeasurably shortened. The vast outlay of 
money, men and muscle in our late war made 
the building of the railroads to California, 
which before seemed gigantic if not impossi¬ 
ble enterprises, easy of accomplishment, and 
we are now reaping the rewards of all these 
enterprises and outlay of capital in the gen¬ 
eral prosperity of every portion of the land, 
and the vast returns of hard money for our 
products sent abroad. 
To drop from the major to the minor, like 
results follow the embarkation of capital and 
brains in what is generally known as fancy 
farming. The poor man, as well as all others in 
the same line, get the benefit eventually. The 
importation and breeding of Jerseys so enthu¬ 
siastically will soon send them all over 
the country and improve their quality, 
and the small farmer will purchase within 
his means animals superior to what he 
could have afforded to bring to their present 
condition. All of us can get from these weal¬ 
thy so-called agriculturists hints which are 
valuable, and tbe farming at tbe East, espe¬ 
cially on dairy fapns, has, within a decade, 
greatly improved in many ways from the ex¬ 
ample of those who have been able to expend 
money and time in the production of the best 
quality of butter. So, let the long pursed fel¬ 
lows go ahead; better buy and improve live 
stock than throw it away on the ‘‘ducks and 
drakes” of Wall Street. We shall reap the ben¬ 
efit of the outlay if they do not pecuniarily, 
and in the meantime they have the fun. 
“Stockman” will see that the Jerseys have 
hardly risen to high-water mark yet compared 
with Short-horn prices. The highest sura yet 
given for a Jersey is $4,500, as against $46,000 
for a Short-horn cow 1 
Lenox, Mass. 
- *■■*■■* - 
OUR ANIMAL PORTRAITS. 
Champion Prize Winner at the Smithfield 
Show. 
This week we present to our readers a por¬ 
trait of the Polled Angus heifer that at the 
S4th and last Smithfield Fat Stock Show won 
the champion prize for the best beast in the 
show and also the sweepstakes prize for the 
best heifer, as mentioned editorially in our 
last issue. According to the Mark Lane Ex¬ 
press the prize money won by her amounted 
to £215 ($1,075) in addition to a silver medal 
and a gold medal, and as she was sold for the 
shambles for £100 after the show, she must 
have netted her owner £315 ($1,575.) She was 
970 days old aud weighed 178S pounds, mak¬ 
ing since birth an average daily gain of 1,84 
pound. She is described as being “ wonder¬ 
ful in top, especially solid and filled out in fore¬ 
quarter, with a neck-chine like a porker, 
handling with a perfection of firm touch, 
deficient only in wanting depth in belly-line 
to flank, and very taking indeed with her ac¬ 
tive carriage and charming bead.” 
Clydesdales Stallion, Black Watch—(64.) 
The portrait of the Clydesdale horse, Black 
Watch (64) Fig. 22, is an engraving from a 
very successful photograph taken at the late 
Live Stock Show at Derby, England, at 
which he took the first prize in the class for 
Clydesdale stallions four years old and up¬ 
wards. He was bred by Mr. W. Imrie, 
Blackhill, near Glasgow : sire— Crown Prince 
(206) ;dam—Flora, by Young Lofty (489.) 
el)c Sitnm'-ijcn). 
A PROFITABLE HOG-HOUSE. 
ISAAC PEASLEE. 
Knowing by some experiments the tnie 
value of hog manure, and that myself and 
most other farmers were losing a large part of 
the profits of then' hogs, 1 set myself to 
work to find some cheap way to build a hog 
house that would save all the liquid as well as 
the solid part of the manure from my hogs. 
Here, on a small scale, is the plan of my hog- 
house, which was completed Oct. 1, 1880: 
It is 22 by 80 feet, with 14-foot posts. The 
building stands on ground that descends 
towards the side where the manure is thrown 
from the pit. It also stands with one end to 
the horse stable, so that the hi rse manure 
may be shoved into the pit through a shove 
door at F. The foundation is laid up with 
common field stone, but the walls of the pit 
are laid in water-lime or common cement, 
and under the wall of the pit there is a drain 
that leads all the surface water away from 
the bottom of the pit. which is also cemented 
to make it water tight. The pit, B, is 30 feet 
long, eight feet wide and four feet belo a- the 
bottom of the sill. The object of making it 
so deep is to get it below the frost, so that the 
water underneath will not affect the cement. 
It will be seen by the plan that I have three 
pens, X. X, X, with feed-way, S, in front. The 
spaces marked A, A, A, are slide doors, through 
which I can shift hogs from one pen to the 
other. Bis a door from the horse stable to 
the feed-way. C is a door to the feed-way 
from outside. D is a door to the pig yard, 
E,E are doors above the sill, through which I 
throw the manure from the pit. Borne may 
ask how can I get the manure out, as the pit is 
so deep. As the ground descends a little to¬ 
wards the doors there are about feet from 
the ground to the sill, so that when a sleigh 
or a truck wagon is driven alongside the 
doors the manure lia9 to be raised but little 
above the sill, and the work is not hard. The 
floor is laid tight from the feed way, and is 
about three inches higher at the feed way than 
at the other end, where it projects over the 
pit 20 inches, so that all the liquid runs into 
the pit. , 
Now for one year’s experiment and the re¬ 
sults: Oct. 1, 1880, I placed in the pen four 
hogs that I was feeding to kill and did kill 
about Dec. 1, and then I placed in it two sow 
Spring pigs and four barrow pigs. From the 
two sows I got, this Spring, 10 pigs, a part of 
which I fatted and a part I sold, and this Fall 
I sold $100 worth of pork, and have put down 
for use $75 worth, and have as many pigs to 
start on anew as I had one year ago. More¬ 
over, from Oct. 1, 1880, to Oct. 1, 1881, I 
obtained 100 two-horse wagon-loads of man¬ 
ure worth at least $100, and over 600 gallons 
of liquid, the value of which I am uuable to 
estimate. I cleaned the pit out the first of 
June and let it stand 20 days without any 
B 
A S 
F] 
TTT 
T E T 
Plan fob Hog House.— Fig. 21. 
JAM. 21 
absorbent, and in that time tha six hogs made 
over 700 gallons of liquid. Over 600 gallons 
of this were taken to the hop-yard anil corn¬ 
field and applied, and one need not imagine 
the results, for the consequent growth could 
be distinctly seen. I would say that I did not 
use any absorbents for the 20 days for three 
reasons: 1, 1 wanted to know if my jut was 
water-tight; 2, to see how much liquid my 
hogs would make, so that I could estimate 
my former loss; 3, in order that I could see 
the effect of the liquid alone on growing 
crops. For absorbents I use in the Winter 
some horse manure and some straw. In 
Spring, Summer and Fall I use dry muck and 
sod. I prefer the dry muck and sod, as tbe hogs 
are fond of them and I think them health - 
ful where hogs are confined to the pen. Under 
the floor plank that projects over the jiit I 
placed a wide plank, the lower end of which 
rests on the bottom of the pit; ou this plank 
I nailed some clea ts, and the hogs walk down 
along it into the jiit, where in hot weather 
they seem to be perfectly at home. A house 
of this size is large enough for from 10 to 12 
hogs, and it does not require a few years to 
make manure enough to pay for, it, for it will 
pay for itself in one year il' well attended to. 
I shall be pleased to hear through the Rural 
from any who have had experience in this 
line of hog houses. 1 have been a reader of 
the Rubai, during most of the time for the 
last 25 years, and hope to read it during the 
time still left me, as I think it is the best agri¬ 
cultural paper printed in America. 
Schoharie Co., N. Y. 
RURAL BRIEFLETS. 
When should a roller be used for sown 
crops ? This is a question which we have been 
trying to answer to our own satisfaction for 
several years past. At first we rolled wheat 
land after the seed was drilled in, but the re¬ 
sults, as shown by comparative tests, were 
not favorable to the practice. The surface of 
the land seems to bake and become encrusted 
more readily, so that rain, instead of pene¬ 
trating it uniformly, collects in every little 
basin. These depressions, during the hard 
rains, become filled with water and overflow, 
causing galleys or runs to form here and 
there, which wash the earth from the roots 
along their e >urse, while further on the earth 
is spread over the surface, that is, is deposited 
in beds which cover and smother the young 
plants. We conclude that rolling after sow¬ 
ing is, therefore, injurious to the crop. The 
best use to which rollers can be put is first to 
firm the soil, if firming is needed, and, if not, 
second, to break up the lumps which the har¬ 
row passes over. Our present method is first 
to plow, then to harrow, then to roll, and then 
either to harrow again and drill, or if the land 
is already well fitted, to drill without the sec¬ 
ond barrowing... 
Abe you cutting your firewood for another 
year? Cut down the old, half-dead trees 
aboutthe bouse and in the fields. A good plan 
to provide wood is, as we think, to plant cut¬ 
tings or roots Spring or Fall, of swift-growing 
trees, like the willow’, ailauthus and catalpa, 
in out-of-the-way places that cannot be profit¬ 
ably cultivated. In from four to six years 
these may be cut down for firewood—the ugly 
or useless corners meanwhile having been im¬ 
proved by their presence... 
A gentleman whose opinions are entitled to 
weight on account of his long experience and 
for tha reason that he has no’personal interests 
at stake, writes us that Mr Hardin commits a 
grievous error (page 842) 1881) in saying that 
Percherons are reputed as possessing “soft 
feet." Now right the contrary is the case; for 
the groat reputation of the true Percherons is 
that they have the very beat offeet andlegs. No 
doubt such errors have their origin in the fact 
that a rascally set of dealers aud jockies in 
France take Boulounais colts as soon as 
weaned and others imported from Flanders, 
to the Percheron and Norman districts, aud 
keep them there from one to three years, 
and then sell them to the ignorant for pare, 
genuine Percheron and Norman stock. 
Here is another letter from S. Y. Haines & 
Co., the disseminators of the so-called “Golden 
Grains" Wheat, which the Rural New- 
Yorker has maintained is the same as that 
originally shown in this country as “ Black- 
bearded Centennial." The letter is numbered 
for reference: 
Philadelphia, Pa., Dec. 31,1881. 
“(1) We have not given up the huut after in¬ 
formation concerning the two wheats Golden 
Grains and Black-bearded Centennial. We 
now’ have before us a letter from the origina¬ 
tor (2) of the two wheats, Mr. Prettymart, of 
Oregon, who exhibited at the ‘Centennial.’ 
We quote from his letter as follow's: 
“ As to your argument with the editor of 
the Rural, I think I can settle that matter. 
